


Run For Your Lives!

by A (AILiSeki)



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Genre: (of sorts), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arson, Gen, Mystery, Some appearances of other characters, basically it's an attempt to fit movie!canon and books!VFD together, the shady VFD we all know and love/hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-02-22
Packaged: 2019-11-02 01:23:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17878406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AILiSeki/pseuds/A
Summary: With Count Olaf taken by the authorities and the mystery of the fire that destroyed their home solved, the Baudelaire children think things will finally be alright. Little do they know that the story of their unfortunate events was only beginning, and there are many more mysteries out there.





	Run For Your Lives!

For a moment, they had won, and it felt like everything would be alright. Count Olaf had been exposed as the greedy monster he was and captured by an angry mob, just as he deserved. The mysterious fire that took away the lives of their parents was finally explained. They were together, and mostly unharmed, and they knew they would be alright.

The Baudelaire children had no idea that their lives were only about to get worse.

Mr. Poe told them about Olaf's penalty, which brought each of the children a secret smile. They hoped their parents would not be ashamed that just this once someone's suffering brought them a little satisfaction, not when that someone caused them so much pain. All of this lasted little, as Mr. Poe then told them that Count Olaf had escaped at the last minute, before trying to assure the children that the authorities would catch him soon. Mr. Poe was not good at being assuring.

The children were dropped at the house of yet another distant relative they had never heard of, a man with an unpronounceable name and a cloud of smoke around his face. Klaus wanted to ask him if he too had experienced a terrible fire, but the man barely exchanged a couple of sentences with the children before announcing that they wouldn't be living with him in his mansion, but in his employees' dorm at the lumber mill, where they had to work to earn their keep.

* * *

The Baudelaire siblings were talking with their new friends, the Quagmire triplets, in the awful shack where they were forced to live in. Isadora was showing her poetry to Violet, who listened attentively, her tied hair showing how focused she was. On her sister's lap, Sunny bit a pencil she stole from Nero's office. Duncan and Klaus were talking about the books they liked, and the triplet showed his friend some notes he took in his green journal. Klaus was still getting used to his new glasses (Dr. Orwell was a terrible villain, but he really needed them, specially now to see the small numbers on Mrs. Bass measuring tapes).

Duncan flipped some pages, and Klaus saw a drawing of a familiar object.

"Wait, what's that?"

Duncan flipped back to that page, and there it was: the drawing of a small spyglass. On the page beside it, there was the drawing of a dark box with a metal plate with the letters "VFD" engraved on it on the lid.

"We don't know." Duncan said. The girls raised their heads to them, curious. "I found it on my mother's desk, after the fire. We had never seen it before."

Klaus stood up and took something from the small, half-empty bag where he kept his few personal belongings. It was the spyglass their parents gave them, identical to the drawing.

He let Duncan examine it.

"We found one of these in our father's desk after the fire." He explained. "And then we got this one with our parents' letter."

The Baudelaire children had told Duncan and Isadora about the letter before, and also about Count Olaf and their other guardians.

"They said they would tell us one day about their friends and the things they did, but this day never came." Violet said in a sad tone.

"Our parents never told us anything." Duncan said.

The children remained silent for a moment, thinking of how much they missed their families.

"What is VFD?" Klaus asked, looking now at the other drawing.

"It was with the spyglass." Duncan said. "We tried figuring what it stands for, but-" He flipped a page, to show a list of possible meanings he and sister thought of. Some had asterisks marking it or were underlined, while others were struck. "So far no luck."

"We can help you." Klaus offered. "Whatever it is, it could concern all of us."

"We would really appreciate that." Isadora said with a soft smile.

"Did you ever find out anything else about your parents?" Duncan asked, moving to an empty page, ready to take notes.

"Our uncle Monty had a spyglass too." Violet said. "He had lost his wife and child in a fire. He was going to take us to Peru, where we would meet people who understood how we felt."

"Aunt Josephine had a picture in her photo album," Klaus said, "in which everyone was carrying a spyglass. There was her, her husband, uncle Monty and our parents, and many people we don't know."

"She didn't want us to see it, and she wouldn't talk about it." Violet added.

"Do you think our parents could be in it as well?" Duncan asked.

"It is likely they were." Klaus said, wishing he could have kept it. "We found out that aunt Josephine's husband, Ike, was investigating fires before he died."

"Aunt Josephine said that there are good and bad people in this world. People who start fires, and people who put them out."

Duncan and Isadora exchanged a look. Isadora opened her mouth to speak, but Klaus didn't notice and spoke first.

"Ike found out who started them." He said, showing another thing he retrieved from his bag: a crumpled piece of paper with a drawing of a pentagon with an eye on its center.

"What is this?" Duncan asked, taking the paper.

"It is a sort of device." Klaus said. "It was in Count Olaf's tower room. It can start fires."

"The iris of the eye is a lens." Violet explained. "It uses the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light to create a fire from sunlight."

"It can be moved." Klaus added. "We found it pointed to where our home used to be."

"Dobo." Sunny said, which meant "Maybe he was the responsible for the fire in your home too."

"Could it be?" Isadora asked, looking at her brother.

Duncan flipped some pages on his journal, to a page where a map of the city was drawn. The handwriting on there was different from his usual.

"Our brother drew this." He explained.

"Quigley was a brilliant cartographer." Isadora said.

"This is where our home used to be." Duncan said, pointing to a small star. "Where is Count Olaf's home?"

Klaus needed to think for a bit to remember. He pointed to it.

"And where was your home?"

Klaus was quick to point. As he did, he realized the problem.

"It's the opposite direction from ours to Count Olaf's home." Duncan said.

"Maybe there is another device somewhere." Klaus said.

"Or maybe it was just an accident." Isadora whispered. She then remembered what she wanted to say before. "About VFD-"

But she was interrupted by Carmelita Spats' strident voice.

"Orphaaans!"

* * *

Duncan and Isadora had new clues to their investigation about their parents and their secrets, and for the first time they had a good guess of what VFD could mean. They were eager to share it with the Baudelaire children, but the arrival of Count Olaf in another of his ridiculous disguises prevented them from doing so. After all, this was a more pressing matter.

They still did their research when they had time, while occupying most of their time trying to figure what Count Olaf's plan could be. When they were with the Baudelaires, they didn't bring up anything that wasn't urgent and let them rest.

They would be able to share their discoveries after this was over. Or so they hoped.

* * *

"VFD! VFD stands for-!" Isadora tried to tell them, but the woman with white face that held her covered her mouth. The bald man was already doing the same to Duncan. She felt her eyes tearing up.

* * *

They thought they had made sense of most of the mysteries in their lives, but when they opened the secret trapdoor and found themselves in the ruins of their home, they realized just how little they knew.

There was no letter this time. Just the three children and the dark, ash covered remains. A pain they thought already cured by now returned as they stared at the bits of a life that felt so far away.

_I want to steal from you_ , Esmé had said.  _I want to steal from you like your mother stole from me!_

They had no time to ask her what she was talking about. There must have been some misunderstanding: their mother wasn't a thief, couldn't be a thief. Besides, what could Esmé Squalor possibly own that she would wish for?

They knew so little.

Klaus stared at their father's table, where he had first seen the spyglass. He could see it now, the black box with the letters VFD, just like the one drawn on Duncan's journal. What did this all mean? Why didn't their parents tell them?

"We have to go." Violet said. "The In Auction starts soon."

* * *

A relief the Baudelaire children hadn't felt in so long came with the news that Count Olaf was captured. They may not be closer to finding out the secrets of VFD, but at least their suffering was close to an end.

They should have realized how wrong they were.

The man officer Luciana took to the front of the Council of Elders was clearly not Count Olaf, they could see. No, Count Olaf was the one introducing himself as a detective, while the one captured was an innocent man, whose only crimes were having a single eyebrow and the same horrible eye tattoo on his ankle.

"Maybe Count Olaf drew that on his ankle to incriminate him." Violet said, later when they were researching in Hector's secret library a way to free the man, who managed to say his name was Jacques before being silenced by the elders.

"I don't think so. He said the tattoo was part of his job." Klaus pointed. "But he couldn't say what his job was."

"Troop?" Sunny said, which meant "Maybe he works for Count Olaf?"

"But no one else in Olaf's troupe has that tattoo… right?" Violet said.

"We don't know it for sure. They wear socks." Klaus said. "He has to be connected to all of this somehow."

"We can ask him tomorrow, after we convince the Council of Elders that he is innocent."

Not too far from the children, Hector worked on his self-sustaining hot air mobile home, pretending not to hear their conversation.

_I'm sorry, Baudelaires. I wish I could answer your questions._

* * *

The children could not believe their eyes as they held the single page of the file under their name, but there it was. A picture of their parents, young, happy and proud, spyglasses in hand, in front of Dark Avenue 667. On their side, Jacques Snicket and a man who looked like some sort of writer trying to cover his face. Above it, a single sentence: "Because of the evidence discussed on page nine, experts now suspect that there may in fact be one survivor of the fire, but the survivor's whereabouts are unknown". And then, at the bottom of the page, the number 13 and the eye that haunted their nightmares.

Before they could even start discussing all of that, they heard Esmé Squalor breaking into the Library of Records.

* * *

The Baudelaire children went through some of Madame Lulu's papers, finding easily pages of newspapers and other documents that revealed to her their whereabouts. It was creepy, learning that they had been watched for so long without knowing. But they had no time to think of it, they had to find any clue about their parents before Madame Lulu or, worse, Count Olaf found them.

One piece of paper called their attention. It seemed like a typed letter, and on the top of it there was the printed image of an eye. Under it, the three mysterious letters.

"VFD." Violet read it aloud. "It is to someone called K."

"' _We need to improve our vigilance and fire defense. Our associates in the city are working on building more Vigilant Fortress Domiciles, and the shipments of materials for the Vitreous_  Fenestras  _for Disposal should arrive in two weeks. It is important that the new Domiciles never end in the hands of-_ "

"VFD!" Sunny said.

"She's right." Violet agreed. "More VFD. Vigilant Fortress Domiciles, Vitreous  _Fenestras_  for Disposal… what do these words mean?"

"Domicile is someone's home." Klaus explained. "Fortress is a large building that offers protection, and vigilant means careful, watchful."

"It sounds like a safe place to live." Violet commented, thinking briefly of how long it had been since the Baudelaire children lived somewhere safe.

Klaus nodded sadly, thinking of the same.

" _Fenestra_  is a Latin word for window." Klaus continued, remembering when he asked his mother about the word defenestration. "Vitreous means made of glass, and disposal…" He trailed off, knowing his sisters knew what the word meant. "I think this is about Count Olaf's house."

"What?"

"Wha?"

"A fortress may have a tower, used for observation. And the eye-shaped window in his room could be used to dispose of something."

"Or someone." Violet whispered.

The three children leaned against Madame Lulu's table, forgetting for a moment that it wasn't as firm as it looked. The impact made the crystal ball slide, until it fell over the edge.

* * *

"What does VFD stand for?"

"It seems to stand for many things. Nearly everything the organization uses, from the Volunteer Feline Detectives to the Vernacularly Fastened Door, has the same initials."

"But what is the organization?" Violet asked. "What is V.F.D.?"

Finally having a chance to think clearly about the clues they had found along the way, Klaus said:

"Wait. If our parents were a part of it… Aunt Josephine spoke about people who put out fires. Like in a-"

"Volunteer fire department." He and Quigley spoke at the same time.

"That's it?" Violet asked, disappointed. "Our parents were fighting fires in secret? What does it have to do with Count Olaf and everything else?"

"The eye tattoo. Both Count Olaf and Jacques Snicket had it." Klaus said.

"The eye is one of VFD's symbols. Along with this." Quigley said, reaching for something in his backpack. It was a spyglass, identical to the one the Baudelaire parents sent to them in a letter during a trip that lasted more than it was supposed to.

Klaus took it from his pocket and showed it to Quigley.

"I found it in Dr. Montgomery's house." Quigley explained. "Jacques told me to keep it, so I could use it as a signal to other volunteers."

"Could that be the reason our parents gave us one as well?" Violet asked.

"Maybe." Klaus replied. "But how can it be used as a signal?"

"I am not sure." Quigley said. "Jacques never explained it. But I think all volunteers have one."

"I don't understand. Is Olaf a volunteer too? Is that why he has that tattoo?" Violet asked.

Quigley flipped through the pages of his commonplace book.

"According to Jacques, something called a 'schism' happened."

"It is a division of a previously united group of people into two or more oppositional parties. It's like a big argument, with everybody choosing sides. Madame Lulu told us about it." Klaus explained. "It divided VFD."

Quigley nodded. "The way Jacques talked, it sounded like the entire organization was in chaos. Volunteers who were once working together are now enemies. Places that were once safe are now dangerous. Both sides are using the same codes, and the same disguises. Even the V.F.D. insignia used to represent the noble ideals everyone shared, but now it's all gone up in smoke."

The children looked around, silent. Among the few objects that were still recognizable, there was another spyglass, probably left behind by some volunteer before the fire. Were they trying to leave a signal, some sort of message?

* * *

"Password, please."

The Baudelaire children exchanged a look as they tried to think of what could be the right thing to say. Klaus remembered something Quigley told them in the ruins of VFD Headquarters. He took the spyglass from his pocket and held it in front of the periscope.

"The world is quiet here." Violet said, remembering the words they found on the library of VFD Headquarters.

* * *

"VFD is a noble organization, and Count Olaf is a terrible villain." Klaus said.

"A noble organization? Is that so?" The hook-handed man said, with a smile that gave the Baudelaire children shivers and that Fiona could barely recognize. "It is their fault your baby sister is coughing her lungs off in that helmet. It is their fault that your parents-"

Violet and Klaus remembered what they learned in the Gorgonian Grotto. It was painful to hear that man's words knowing that had some truth to it. But Violet had learned something else there. She reached for her newspaper clipping in her pocket, and interrupted Olaf's henchman reading it aloud.

" _Verifying Fernald's Defection, by Jacques Snicket._ "

* * *

Inside the taxi was not Quigley Quagmire, but a woman that the Baudelaire children had never seen before, and yet who looked somewhat familiar. She looked startled for a moment, until Klaus took the spyglass from his pocket and showed it to her.

She then gave a very slight smile. "Hello, Baudelaires. Climb aboard."

"Who are you?" Violet asked, suspicious.

"I am Kit Snicket." The woman answered, and the children climbed aboard.

* * *

"I'm not throwing away my ribbon." Violet said. "I'm still going to invent things, no matter what Ishmael says."

"I'm not throwing away my commonplace book." Klaus said. "I'll still research things, even if there's no library here." He paused for a while, looking at the spyglass. "I can't throw away this either."

He didn't need to explain to his sisters why. It was the only thing they had left of their parents, besides the picture and the letter he kept safe in his commonplace book. Even if they had no use for it, none of the children wanted to separate from it.

"No throw this." Sunny said, holding up a gift she got from Friday.

* * *

The Baudelaire children followed the Incredibly Deadly Viper to the huge apple tree, until it stopped near a gap in its large roots. It was covered by what seemed a sort of door, that had a small metal plate on its side, with a circular hole that reminded them of a keyhole, only bigger. The snake quickly disappeared between some fallen leaves, and came back holding in its mouth a spyglass just like the one Klaus kept before Ishmael took it away with the other items the children had. It couldn't be the same one, though, as this one seemed much older.

"Could it be?" Violet asked, taking the spyglass from the Incredibly Deadly Viper. It was the right size. She took a chance, and put it into the keyhole, and spun it. The door opened.

* * *

"I've done lots of good things in my life. I once adopted two orphans and a little monkey, and I've been considered for several prestigious theatrical awards."

"You're the one who made us orphans in the first place." Klaus said, voice icily cold. The three siblings knew that, they had known it since the terrible night when Olaf tried to marry Violet, but they had never spoken of it. Still, in the middle of all the mysteries and unanswered questions they encountered during their journey, this was the only truth that remained unshakable, and knowing it gave them a sort of hope that one day all the mysteries would be solved and all questions would be answered.

Olaf gave them an unfathomable look, and then started laughing. It was not the laugh full of strange sounds that he had when he was on board of the submarine called Carmelita, not the evil and confident sound he made in the Hotel Denouement. It was a mocky laugh, as if the Baudelaire children were three clowns who had just told the funniest joke. The fungus was already affecting him, and it showed when the laugh became coughing.

"Is that what you think?" he said finally when he caught his breath.

"We know it," Sunny said.

"You don't know anything," Count Olaf said.

**Author's Note:**

> I have been thinking of something like this for a long time, and a couple of days ago I woke up at 2am with the perfect idea of how to do it and almost half of the fic written in my head. I don't usually explain my behind the scenes ideas in author notes but I am very satisfied with what I did here so I am doing it this time. Feel free to skip this if it's not your thing.  
> \- The idea was to get closer and closer to book canon as the story goes. Depending on your memory and how long it has been since your last read, you may have noticed that halfway through this there are more and more book quotes.  
> \- I didn't write in details how the hypnosis plot goes, since this is focused on the reveals about VFD, but I posted [an outline of it on my tumblr](https://virtualfindingsdocumented.tumblr.com/post/182940810609/movie-verse-tmm-olafs-henchman-convinces-people).  
> \- Klaus gets a lot of scenes in his POV since he has that sort of hero role in the movie. I dislike this choice on their part but I did for the mood. Similarly, Duncan gets a more of this role than Isadora.  
> \- Since Netflix put a lot of focus on the interactions between Duncan & Violet and between Klaus & Isadora and the shippy side of it (something I don't dislike, since I shipped them too in my first read), I decided to take the opposite route and make it so Klaus & Duncan and Violet & Isadora interact more. I really could see an adaptation doing so to avoid things getting shippy, because *sarcasm on* surely no one would ship two girls or two boys, right? *sarcasm off* Also, Isadora showing Violet her poetry is cute, and Klaus and Duncan being close due to their interest in their parents' secrets work really well.  
> \- I like the idea of showing how the Quagmires found out about VFD, or at least a bit of it.  
> \- Since in the movie there are no mentions of Beatrice, it would be better for Esmé to just say "your mother" at once. The idea of Lemony without his undying love for Beatrice is weird, so I must explore it more in another occasion. I just cut him from this fic since that's another subplot.  
> \- Because the movie's design of the eye tattoo has no hidden letters, I needed to link it to VFD in some another way. Thankfully, VFD is known for putting their eyes everywhere.  
> \- I wanted some backstory on Olaf's giant burning eye window. Because it is an eye, it surely has links to VFD. As a non-native English speaker, I hope my new meanings for the letters are not too awkward, and I thank online dictionaries.  
> \- The idea of Quigley having Monty's spyglass was stolen from Netflix, I confess. I am proud of how in character I could make him and Jacques sound.  
> \- Movie!Fernald, in his few scenes, is mean but in a different way than book!Fernald. This whole scene was based on that moment in which he stabs the picture of the Baudelaire mansion in the tower. I wonder what he had to say about the Baudelaire parents... something about the opera? Whatever almost killed them in Europe? Something completely different?  
> \- It was difficult to come up with uses for the spyglass that are not what Netflix did (that I absolutely love, but the movie's version of the spyglass doesn't look to have all those functions).  
> \- Most people hate movie!Olaf and his lack of depth and his over comical ways. I think it is fitting for him to laugh at the children, no matter if they were right or not, and even as a deadly fungus is obstructing his breath.  
> \- The title comes from a rumor I saw back in 2007 about the movie's sequel. It would be a weird title for a sequel, but I like it on this fic.


End file.
